Vijay Hazare Trophy 2025-26: Shubman Gill to play for Punjab against Sikkim in closed-doors match in Jaipur

India’s Test and ODI captain Shubman Gill will turn up for Punjab in a Vijay Hazare Trophy fixture against Sikkim on Saturday, but the match will be played behind closed doors – without spectators.

Last week, more than 20,000 spectators had turned up at the Sawai Mansingh Stadium to watch Rohit Sharma in action for Mumbai. However, Punjab will play at the Jaipuria Vidyalaya ground, where there are no facilities for the spectators.

Situated inside the Jaipuria School premises, the ground has no seating arrangements for spectators. Even though there’s a small gallery above the players’ changing rooms, it is only restricted to the BCCI delegates, and the students of the school and the academy.

A couple of days ago, when Yashasvi Jaiswal featured for Mumbai in a fixture against Goa at the same ground, hundreds of spectators waited outside the premises, just to catch a glimpse of the star batter. They climbed up the high walls and cheered for Jaiswal, who waved at them as an acknowledgment.

However, with no live streaming of the match either, the cricket fans will be deprived of watching Gill, who will return to competitive cricket after a couple of weeks. “This is the prerogative of the BCCI. The fixtures were decided much in advance, and back then, there was no clarity about the availability of the international players. And, with all the four venues in the city hosting Vijay Hazare Trophy games, there’s no way we could have shifted this game to the Sawai Mansingh Stadium,” DD Kumawat, the convenor of the ad-hoc committee for the Rajasthan Cricket Association, told Sportstar.

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Not just Gill, India’s T20I captain Suryakumar Yadav is also set to turn up for Mumbai against Himachal Pradesh at the same venue on January 6. Ever since the news of Indian players featuring in the tournament spread, there were speculations that some of the games could be shifted to the Sawai Mansingh Stadium, which can accommodate nearly 25,000 spectators. However, Kumawat rubbished such claims. “There’s an event lined up at the SMS Stadium, for which it will be out of bounds from January 6, so even if we want, we can’t host any games there,” he said.

Jaipur currently has four BCCI-affiliated grounds, of which Sawai Mansingh Stadium has the maximum capacity. While the Anantam ground and KL Saini Stadium have make-shift seating arrangements, security remains a concern.

However, this is not the first time in the tournament that a match will be played behind closed doors. The tournament opener between Delhi and Andhra, featuring Virat Kohli and Rishabh Pant, was played without spectators – at the BCCI Centre Of Excellence in Bengaluru, after the Karnataka State Cricket Association was denied permission to host matches at the Chinnaswamy Stadium by the state government and police due to safety concerns.

As the Punjab team trained at the RCA Academy on Friday, a bunch of cricket enthusiasts gathered around the training facility, hoping to catch a glimpse of Gill. But Gill and Arshdeep Singh were yet to reach the city.

Published on Jan 02, 2026